A mistake by one university lecturer ended up leaving law students devastated as they received an incorrect result for their resit exam in criminal law. 

The story was first revealed by the news portal Insiter Online. The article explained how all the students who sat for the exam, except for one, received a result of anywhere between 21-29 marks, well below pass mark.

Concerned, the students called the faculty of laws to check whether there was some form of error.  They were merely informed that head of faculty, Nathalie Cauchi, had reconfirmed with the lecturer whether the results were correct before they were published.

The students then called a meeting with the dean of the faculty Kevin Aquilina, who confirmed there was indeed an error in publishing the results. It seems, that the lecturer correcting the exam papers left out one column in the excel sheet, resulting in a miscalculated average.

Meanwhile, the revision of paper application for this particular exam has been suspended, and official results are to be published later today. 

In a statement, the European Law Students Association (Malta) said that whilst appealing for increased diligence in the procedure of processing examination results prior to publication, ELSA Malta looks forward to the clarification from the Faculty of Laws following confirmed reports that a total of 22 first year law students who had sat for the Criminal Law examination re-sit had collectively failed after what seems to have been a mix-up in the process of gathering this examination’s results, caused involuntarily by human error during the inputting of results.

ELSA Malta said it recognised the fact that the situation was already being amended at the same time that a group of students requested to hold a meeting with the Faculty of Law’s Dean and acting Head of Department of Criminal Law to raise their concerns. During the meeting, the students were told that the situation was already being corrected, and that in fact, all students who had sat for the Criminal Law examination re-sit had passed. The new results are to be published soon.

That such a mistake could in fact come to pass is worrying as such incidents put to question the peace of mind, which should come with every mark awarded being indeed the one deserved. If this incident was simply a case of erroneously inputting data, then we consider this as no trivial matter and call for attention and decisive measures to ensure such situations are not repeated especially in matters, which could affect students’ progression in the course.